Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:58, 25 January 2008

Revision as of 20:44, 24 February 2008

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There are three basic markups used to make technical terms stand out; these are ''italic'' (also termed ''oblique'' with [[sans-serif]] fonts), '''bold''', and '''''bold italic'''''. The following uses of these styles are recommended for technical articles:

''Italic'' (edited as <tt><nowiki>''</nowiki>italic<nowiki>''</nowiki></tt>); is used for:

*ForeignWords, languageother wordsthan that[[loan areword]]s, not generally usedof inforeign Englishlanguages: ''hidari'' (Jp: "left"); but not the word "gauche" (from Fr: "left"), since this is an established loan word in English.

*Binomial names of organisms (''Genus species''), which are alwaysconsidered ''italicized'';Latin, theeven genusif namenewly iscoined. (The initial first-letter of a genus is always capitalized, thebut speciesnever namethat isof nota species.) Higher taxonomic levels are not italicized. When both the classification term and its name form a unified title, they are both first-letter capitalized: "Family Poaceae"; when they do not form a title, only the name is capitalized: "the family Poaceae".

*Foreign language words that are not generally used in English: ''hidari'' (Jp: "left"); but not the word gauche (from Fr: "left"), since this is an established word in English.

*Technical or scientific terms that are defined above in the same article (and appear there in '''''bold italic'''''; see below) to demonstrate use of the term, or emphasize that use to the reader. Although it is standard practice in text books to put in italics or bold font those words likely to be new to the reader only the first time the word appears, it is helpful to the learning process if newly defined terms that reappear are rendered in ''italic'' font elsewhere in a Wikipedia article.

*Terms that are not defined at that point in the text, but are nonetheless "technical", although will likely appear in numerous other articles in Wikipedia. Here, the "emphasize only the first time used on a page" rule could apply. Example (from [[Plant]]):